


A Fleeting Dream

by nightingvle



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Character Study, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-29
Updated: 2019-08-29
Packaged: 2020-09-28 22:40:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20433635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightingvle/pseuds/nightingvle
Summary: Rielah Brosca begins to feel something she gave up on long ago.





	A Fleeting Dream

**Author's Note:**

> TW for mentions of alcoholism

During the moonlit hours, amidst the shadows of the trees, lies a dwarven warden who resides in her lover’s tent, unable to quiet her racing thoughts. Some of these thoughts revolve around the upcoming blight, the mess with Loghain, and a few foolish ideas she imagines Morrigan would scoff at. But despite all those important matters she should be focusing on, most of her thoughts revolve around something else entirely. _Someone_ else.

Her head turns slightly to give her a better view of the woman sleeping beside her. Locks of hair that Rielah wishes to sweep away have fallen across her face, and so she moves them away as gently as she can without waking her. The woman twitches her nose, but does not awake. Rielah smiles.

She takes in the other woman’s form, silently admiring her and wondering how she, of all people, managed to catch Morrigan’s attention. Her eyes drift back to her strangely gentle face, in spite of the sharpness of her features. She looks so peaceful when she sleeps, as if the difficult years haven’t affected her so. A warm feeling bubbles up in her chest as she looks upon the witch, soon traveling to her cheeks as she feels herself redden.

Is this… love?

Most of what she knows of love comes from Leske, who went through relationships like a noble spending their gold. Besides his perspective, she’s unfamiliar with the concept. She’s never been interested in men, and women were always much too difficult to approach. Her charm seems to fade away the moment she faces them and her words seem to twist around her tongue. Rielah always found it a relief to go back to the Carta business, along with the fighting it inevitably brought. _That_ she knows how to do, and she does it well.

Rielah had more important things to focus on rather than relationships—trying to survive each day with barely enough coin to scrape by or figuring out how to get Beraht off her sister’s back for the day wasn’t an easy job. And of course, there was her drunken mother to deal with. 

The dwarf wasn’t always like that, though. When they were younger, she would beg Leske to tell stories of his romantic endeavors. She once wondered what it would be like to feel that close with someone, to hold someone that dearly in your heart. She still does, deep down. But as she grew older, reality hit her, and she gave up on that idea long ago.

That wasn’t the only dream she had, however. Brosca once dreamt of going to the surface and making a new life for herself. There were rumors of the caste system being unknown to the surfacers, non-existent, even. It was almost impossible to imagine back then, but she clung to that dream all the same. That was until her mother cried and begged for her not to leave her all alone lest she drinks herself to death, made sure Rielah knew someone as worthless as her could never make it up here, took away any remaining hopes she had for that life. But despite it all, here she is, proving her damned mother wrong.

Rielah spent years thinking her life would always be confined to Orzammar. And if going to the surface was hard to imagine, she never believed she would someday be a warden, a status revered by even the dwarves who once treated her worse than the dirt at the bottom of their shoes. Just as the surface seemed out of her reach, so did love. If that dream could be possible for someone like her, then perhaps love isn’t so out of reach either.

The warden tries to brush the foolish notion aside and out of mind, but as she focuses back on the sleeping woman beside her, remembering the ghost of her touch, that idea feels _right_. Her chest steadily rises and falls with each breath, and Rielah knows she could easily take the opportunity to betray her. The witch has nothing but magic to defend herself with, and that’s if she were to even wake up in time. And yet she continues sleeping soundly beside her, as if a show of trust.

Love should be having complete and utter trust with one another, knowing they’ll have your back just as you’ll have theirs. It’s about being vulnerable enough to show them every part of yourself, to know them as well as you’d know yourself. That’s what Rielah believes, anyway.

Perhaps that’s another reason she gave up on the idea of love. To trust someone _that_ deeply seems impossible. Not even her best friend, Leske, held much of her trust. How could she ever feel that way with someone when she grew up having to constantly watch for the knife at her back?

She doubts Morrigan meant it as a show of trust or anything resembling that. They did have a long night, after all. It’s only natural for her to be tired. No one could feel that way for someone like her. But Rielah, on the other hand, feels herself drifting away to sleep as well. 

As her eyes begin to droop, she realizes she forgot the dagger she usually keeps tucked underneath her pillow. But this realization does not startle the warden, nor push her to go and retrieve it. Instead, she listens for sleep’s call and answers.

Perhaps she is beginning to understand that forgotten feeling.


End file.
